SPEAKING TRUTH IS TABOO????

Money, and Name Recognition

For some reason, speaking the truth within the party has once again become taboo.

How does that even happen?

Because truth was never actually the objective. It was branding. It was a slogan people could wear when it benefited them. “Transparency.” “Accountability.” “Truth.” Those words get thrown around constantly, but the moment they are applied in a way that is uncomfortable or inconvenient, they get rejected immediately.

The reality is simple. Most people do not want truth. They want AFFIRMATION. They want VALIDATION. They want their BELIEFS REINFORCED. They want their candidate protected. They want to feel like they are on the right side of something without having to confront whether that something can actually win.

The moment truth challenges that comfort, the reaction is predictable. The truth-teller becomes the enemy. Suddenly it is not about whether the information is correct. It becomes about TONE. It becomes about FEELINGS. It becomes about LOYALTY. It becomes about who you are “hurting.”

That is NOT accountability. That is emotional gatekeeping.

Let’s get back to first principles.

The purpose of a political party is NOT to make people feel good. It is NOT to provide a platform for everyone to express themselves. It is NOT to reward effort, passion, or ideological purity.

The purpose of a political party is to win elections in November.

Everything else is secondary.

So if that is the mission, then every decision we make should be evaluated against that mission. Not whether it feels fair. Not whether it satisfies a faction. Not whether it protects egos.

One question only. Does this help us win in November?

And if the answer is NO, then it needs to be reconsidered.

That means we have to be honest about the primary. Because the primary determines the nominee. And the nominee determines whether we win or lose in November.

This is where people get uncomfortable.

NOT every candidate has a path to victory. NOT every campaign is viable. NOT every message breaks through. NOT every operation is capable of SCALING.

That is NOT an insult. That is REALITY.

Statewide primaries are not small. You are dealing with over a million Republican voters. Realistically, you need to reach hundreds of thousands of them repeatedly. Not once. Not twice. Over and over again until your name is recognized, remembered, and chosen. Unfortunately elections are in-fact a popularity contest.

You do not accomplish that by talking to just 7,000 delegates (Also of the 7000 delegates we have only about 2000 or so actively participate regularly.. as in go to meetings, go to events etc).

You do not accomplish that by staying inside a bubble of 15,000 to 20,000 politically active people.

That entire ecosystem, as loud as it is, does not even scratch 1% of the electorate.

Less than One percent.

Think about that…

Yet entire statewide campaigns are built around impressing that one percent. Entire strategies revolve around internal party chatter, events, and social media echo chambers. It creates the illusion of momentum. It creates the illusion of support. It creates the illusion of viability.

But when the broader electorate shows up, that illusion collapses instantly.

Because the rest of the voters were never reached.

This is the disconnect that keeps repeating cycle after cycle.

And when someone points it out, instead of adapting, people get defensive. They assume there must be a conspiracy. They assume the system is rigged against them. They assume someone is holding them back.

No.

You are not being held back. You are being outscaled.

There is a difference.

Scaling requires infrastructure. It requires data. It requires targeting. It requires repetition. It requires consistency. It requires time.

And yes, it requires MONEY.

That is the part everyone wants to avoid… Money is not everything. But without it, you have nothing.

How do you reach hundreds of thousands of voters?

• Mailers cost money. Printing, design, postage, list acquisition. It adds up fast.

• Digital advertising costs money. Reaching voters across multiple platforms repeatedly is NOT free.

• Television costs money.

• Radio costs money.

• Streaming ads cost money.

• Field operations cost money. Staff, offices, travel, events.

• Polling costs money.

• Data costs money.

• Analytics cost money.

• Signs cost money.

• Billboards cost money.

• Literature costs money.

Every single touchpoint required to build name recognition and persuasion costs money.

• There is no workaround where you just believe harder and it happens.

• There is no strategy where passion replaces scale.

• There is no scenario where ignoring these realities leads to victory.

What actually happens is predictable. Candidates without the resources stay confined to small circles. They feel momentum because everyone around them agrees with them. They mistake agreement for growth. They mistake noise for signal.

Then the primary happens…

And reality hits all at once.

Understanding this is not “establishment thinking.” It is not betrayal. It is not selling out. It is learning the rules of the game you are choosing to play. If you want to change outcomes, you do not ignore reality. You master it.

If the grassroots wants to win more races, then the answer is not to deny these mechanics. The answer is to build the capacity to operate within them. Raise money. Build networks. Develop infrastructure. Expand beyond the bubble. Learn how to communicate at scale.

Adapt or lose. Those are the only two options.

And continuing to pretend that everyone is equally viable does not make the party stronger. It makes it weaker. It fragments the vote. It dilutes resources. It drags out primaries. It leaves the eventual nominee damaged, underfunded, and behind heading into November.

That is how you lose winnable races. This is not about being harsh. This is about being honest. Because honesty gives you a chance to fix the problem. Fantasy guarantees you repeat it.

So yes, we are going to talk about viability.
Yes, we are going to talk about resources.
Yes, we are going to talk about who actually has a path and who does not.

Because the mission is not to protect feelings.

The mission is to win.

And if telling the truth about what it takes to win makes me the villain in some people’s eyes, so be it.

Because at the end of the day, reality does not care about your feelings, your faction, or your narrative.

It only cares about results.

And November is where reality collects its receipts.

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So let’s talk about REALITY when it comes to candidates.

Take Ralph Rebandt. In 2022, he received 4.1% of the vote, which comes out to 45,046 votes. Let’s be generous for a second. Let’s say he doubles that. Now he’s at 8.2%, roughly 90,000 votes. Still not competitive. Let’s go even further and say he triples his performance. Now we’re talking 12.3%, about 135,000 votes.

That still does not win a primary. Not even close.

There is no modern example of a Michigan statewide candidate increasing their vote share five times over and suddenly becoming competitive in the next cycle. That is not how this works. And it definitely does not happen by running the same type of campaign, with the same reach, targeting the same small circles.

The reality is, this looks far more like a Lieutenant Governor play than a Governor campaign. That explains the focus. That explains the behavior. That explains the frustration over not getting in front of delegates at events that he’s not at. Because the Lieutenant Governor race is decided at the post-primary convention, by the delegates.

But even there, reality applies.

Delegates are not supposed to override the will of the gubernatorial nominee. Their role is to affirm and support the ticket. When they try to go rogue and insert their own choice, it creates division, bad press, and unnecessary damage heading into November. We have seen attempts at that before, and it never ends well.

Why? Because it weakens the top of the ticket. And when you weaken the top, you weaken everything beneath it.

Think about it this way. Imagine if at the RNC 2024, delegates ignored TRUMP and decided to pick a completely different Vice President than the one TRUMP nominated (JD VANCE). What would that signal? Chaos. Division. Instability. That is exactly the same concept.

This is not personal. This is structural.

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Now take Aric Nesbitt.

Do I like Aric? Yes. He’s a good guy. He’s made strong points. He’s put out some good messaging. But that is not the question. The question is whether he has built the level of name recognition required to win a statewide primary.

And the honest answer unfortunately at this point is NO, not at the level needed to win in less than 4 months from now (August)… Could he spend a bunch of money now and build that name recognition starting now? There’s a possibility but I just dont see how, Media and ad reservation, billboard reservations should have been done MONTHS ago… (Think about the amount of money Perry Johnson had to spend in 3 months just to build the Name Recognition he currently has)

That kind of recognition has to be built early, aggressively, and at scale. Months of spending. Broad exposure. Repetition across the entire state. Most voters do not know who the Senate Majority Leader is. They cannot name the last five. It is not a household name, and it does not automatically translate into statewide awareness.

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Tom Leonard unfortunately was in the same boat.

So who actually has name recognition?

John James has it. Not because people sat down and studied his policy positions, but because they have seen his name over and over again. He ran statewide twice for U.S. Senate. That means millions of dollars in advertising, constant media coverage, debates, interviews, national attention, and repeated exposure across every region of the state.

That matters more than people want to admit.

Name recognition is not about whether someone agrees with you. It is about whether someone even knows you exist when they walk into the voting booth. John James does not have to introduce himself to most voters. They already have an impression of him, positive or negative, and that alone puts him miles ahead of candidates starting from zero.

Then factor in previous national attention and endorsements. When you run high-profile races, you are not just building recognition in that moment, you are banking it for future cycles. You are creating a base level of awareness that carries forward. That is something you cannot replicate quickly, and it is something you cannot fake.

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Mike Cox is another example, just from a different era.

He served two terms as Attorney General and won statewide in a political environment that was not easy for Republicans. During that time, he was constantly in the news. Press conferences, legal battles, statewide issues, media appearances. For years, his name was tied to major stories across Michigan.

That kind of exposure leaves a lasting imprint.

Even though some of that recognition is older, it still exists. Especially with older and more consistent voters who actually turn out in primaries. They remember the name. They have heard it before. There is familiarity there, and familiarity lowers the barrier to support.

That is a huge advantage.

Because in a crowded field, REGULAR voters default to what they recognize. Not what is technically best on paper, not who has the most detailed policy platform, not to who is ideologically pure, but who feels familiar and credible in the moment they are making a decision.

That is how real-world voting behavior works.

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Then you have someone like Perry Johnson, which is a completely different path to the same destination.

He uses financial capacity to create name recognition on demand. Massive ad buys, repeated messaging, saturation across media channels. When you have the resources, you can accelerate what normally takes years into a much shorter window.

You can force your name into the conversation.

You can make voters feel like they have heard of you before, even if they had not six months ago. You can build familiarity through repetition. Not organically, but mechanically.

And while people love to criticize that approach, the reality is it works. Not because it is perfect, but because it achieves the same core objective…

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NAME RECOGNITION!

That is the common thread across all of these examples.

Different paths, same outcome.

Either you build name recognition over time through repeated exposure and public presence, or you build it quickly through resources and scale. But one way or another, it has to exist.

Because without it, you are INVISIBLE to the REGULAR VOTER! The voters who ACTUALLY DECIDE OUTCOMES IN AUGUST AND NOVEMBER! And invisible candidates do not win statewide primaries.

HERES ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Donald Trump, People love to say he was outspent, or pollical outsider, and both is true. But they ignore the real reason he was able to overcome all that. He had decades of built-in name recognition. Television, media, interviews, branding, The Apprentice. His name had been sitting at kitchen tables across the country for 30 years before he ever ran.

He did not start from zero. That is the difference.

And that is the reality people don’t want to accept.

You don’t win statewide primaries with hope. You don’t win with passion alone. You don’t win by convincing a small group of politically active people.

You win by reaching hundreds of thousands of voters, over and over again, until your name is known, remembered, and chosen.

That takes infrastructure. That takes resources… That takes MONEY!

Whether people like it or not, that is the current game of politics.

And ignoring the rules of the game does not change them.

It just guarantees you lose.

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Once you understand name recognition, you can start asking the real question:

Who can actually win in November?

Everything else comes first for a reason—viability, electability, and name recognition. Without those, the question doesn’t even apply. But once those boxes are checked, it all comes down to one thing: Who WINS.

Look at the reality of the field.

• ONE candidate has WON statewide twice against Democrats.

• ONE candidate has LOST statewide twice against Democrats.

• ONE candidate has the ability to self-fund at scale if he chooses. (But even that comes with history. Dick DeVos could self-fund too in 2006. That didn’t guarantee victory.)

The real question is this: In a three-way race, who do voters actually choose?

Republican vs Benson vs Duggan.

That’s the battlefield.

In a normal situation, Democrats would unite behind Jocelyn Benson. That would make the math straightforward. and the independent would siphon a bit from both sides, simply reducing the number of votes needed for either the republican or democrat to win.

But this is NOT a normal situation.

There are clear signs of division. There are indications that figures like Gretchen Whitmer and others may lean more toward Mike Duggan. That splits the Democrat vote significantly.

At the same time, you have high-profile and suburban Republicans also supporting Duggan (The Democrat in Disguise), splitting the Republican Side.

That complicates everything.

You now have a fractured field, with votes being pulled in multiple directions. In that kind of race, the idea that “any Republican can win” is simply wrong. That only works if Republicans stay unified and nominate a candidate who can reach beyond the base and pull independents, suburban voters, blue collar voters that the democrats abandoned.

Because the mission of the party is simple.

Win elections.

And that mission starts in the primary by choosing the candidate who can actually win the general. Not the one who feels best. Not someone who is ideologically pure. Not the one who wins arguments online. Not the one who dominates small circles.

Simply one who CAN win in November.

Voting for a candidate who has no path to winning the primary is no different than voting third party in the general.

It might feel good. It might feel principled.

But functionally, it does nothing to impact the outcome.

It’s a vote that could have gone toward a viable candidate. A vote that could have helped ensure the nominee is someone who can actually win in November.

Because if we get the primary wrong, the general election is already lost before it even begins.

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PRINCIPLES WITHOUT POWER ARE NOTHING MORE THAN GOOD IDEAS!